Gazing out over the calm waters of the Lewisville Aquatic Center, swimmers from across Texas take their marks for one of the biggest meets of the season. The starting gun shot echoes throughout the building and the swimmers leap as far and as fast as they can into the cold waters below. The Jesuit swimming and diving team competed in the Texas Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association (TISCA) swim meet on Friday and Saturday, November 20-21, 2015. They surprised the competition and exceeded the expectations that they had set for themselves.
All in all, the meet was “fantastic,” according to Coach Doug Moyse, “The team finished 7th overall in the meet, which is better than our ninth place finish last year.” Abbas Hussain ’17 had similar remarks, “As a team, we were firing on all cylinders for that meet. So many guys poured out their heart and soul for that meet and it’s nice to see our results reflect that.” Placing higher than they did last year increases the team’s hopes and aspirations for an even better performance at this year’s Texas state meet, looking to beat Jesuit’s best all-time finish of 5th place, which they received last year.
Coach Doug Moyse told The Roundup that he was especially impressed with senior Brendan Feehery who won two events including the 200 yard IM with a time of 1:50.85 and the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 57.20. Winning an event at a meet this big is not an easy achievement. In the 200 IM, Feehery only won by 0.04 seconds, scraping out a victory over senior Duncan Lee from Plano.
When asked about how the team has improved thus far into the season, Coach Moyse stated: “As a team, we are progressing very well. This year we won Ranger Relays and we are performing even better than last year, which was our best year. We are set up really well going into the district swim meet, which will decide how far we go at state.”
The Ranger team has performed historically well up to this point in their season and the chemistry amongst the team members can not be overlooked as a key contributing factor. Hussian ecstatically said that the team “is really acting as a cohesive unit” and that practice and meets “are just really good times with some really good guys.”
Stay tuned to The Roundup for more coverage of the Jesuit swimming and diving team’s 2015-16 season!
